Thinking About Buying Links? Read This First…

1.It works. When done properly, there’s no risk of penalty because its impossible to distinguish what’s a paid placement and what’s not.

2. PR companies have been buying coverage for decades. You think that [fully funded] startup got coverage on FastCo because their “app” is so amazing? No, the wheels were greased.

3. It breaks Google’s rules, not laws. Have you seen the filth on Instagram? Companies are paying “influencers” to advertise products and are not disclosing it. This is breaking the law (and ethics), there’s a HUGE difference.

my partner and I spoke with you earlier in the year about you maybe working with us but we were budget constrained at the time. i note you said recently you were now stacked out but we now have budget coming on-stream and wondered if we could maybe re-visit that conversation?

I haven’t seen this talked about properly before, and you hit the nail on the head, and then out the damn park.

Link placement like this in comparison to what most social media campaigns (and if you look through the main SMM blogs, you’ll find tactics a lot worst/more illegal than what you showcased) then you don’t even have the same level of moral corruption – It’s just Google does such a good f’ing job of scaring the living daylights out of people, that they get paranoid at even the mention of certain buzzwords… Even though the people who’re really making the most money out of these places aren’t doing just content marketing, or just black hat.. They’re combining the 2.

Hi Ryan,
THANK YOU for the amazing tips.
I have one question, please:
I sell insurance service and I’m trying to build links to my site. I’m also trying to rank for keyword “Private insurance advisor”. My questions is:
When someone agrees to give me a link to my site, is it better to put the keyword “private insurance advisor” and link this keyword to my site as keyword anchor OR I should just place the link http://www.mysite.com? Which one is better from SEO point of view keyword anchor or full URL?
Thank you soooo much

I just received an email from a board director congratulating me on the SEO process I have implemented but then goes on to say that he feels it is too slow and we need to get some ‘high quality’ links to push our site(s) onto page 1 for our key terms…

He is happy for me to spend more money on achieving this and has asked for a response and some ideas…

no, its not always worth it. it depends on your overall budget, link needs and the quality of the link you’re purchasing. i don’t have any exact metrics to give you, but understanding which links to buy just comes with time and experience. start by looking at basics metrics like DA, TC, CF and traffic estimates and you should be ok.

I build a link budget into the monthly retainer (generally about $1,500/month depending on the client). My team lines up the opportunities and they send them to me for final approval. At the end of the day it’s my decision on what and how much to pull the trigger on.

Could you share a little bit more about how much it normally costs for a link on a inner page for a blogger?
I know you mentioned $100 to $150, but that seems steep. Do you find it’s often less than this?

I’ll be honest, I’ve paid $400 – 500 on a link such as Huffpost, so when I saw the 100-150 my eyes lit up. I know a decent amount of how SEO works, but somethings I am totally clueless… Ryan, just started looking at your content today, been stuck on it… You come across as a cool and very honest person…. breath of fresh air…

If the link for a HUFF Post doesn’t really drive traffic, but gets decent social share and such, is it really worth it… How much does it effect the improvement of your site’s overall placement in the serps? Just the overall health of the website?

A link from HuffPost will ALWAYS be a good thing, the question is really how much is worth it to pay for coverage there. I don’t look at links from HuffPost and related sites as “ranking” links, i.e. I don’t expect to get on those sites and then start to see a big KW ranking. I view them as massive signs of trust, authority and brand, which raises the OVERALL ranking power and authority of your site / brand.

Best way I found to find good signal websites/blogs is searching on DMOZ and filtering more with age of the domain, HTTPS etc. DMOZ editors actually check the websites fully manually. Many of those blogs will have fix rate around $150 to $200 as one time fees. It prudent to not directly contact them but approach via some good professional or agency.

Those blogs with hardly 1000 hits gives better signal effect in long term than too much popular sites. It is probably because those websites has good content but they never used SEO for themselves. Google probably counts them as natural, innocent.

There are some great suggestions in here, Ryan. However, I am confused about one thing. Isn’t it against the rules to pay a blogger for an article or reference and then not make the link they include a “nofollow” link? And if they have to make it a “nofollow” link then what’s the value of it other than awareness? And when it comes to awareness, unless it’s a blog with high traffic volume or a sizable social following, then you’re essentially paying to get noticed by only a handful of people.

they’re aware. the sites we’re targeting are awesome blogs – it’s really just an advertisement. there’s really no risk, there’s absolutely no way for google (or anyone) to tell that the links are paid for. how would google know?